photo by: Mike Yoder/Journal-World File Photo

The Douglas County Jail is shown in this file photo from February 2015.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office has been authorized to end its current medical services contract for jail inmates due to its dissatisfaction with the provider.

At their meeting on Wednesday, county commissioners authorized the Sheriff’s Office to sign a contract with a new provider, Turn Key Health Clinics, for inmate medical services. The office wanted to end its contract with Advanced Correctional Healthcare because of dissatisfaction with its services and recent corporate changes, according to a memo in the agenda.

The Sheriff’s Office has been in a contract with Advanced Correctional Healthcare since 2016. Major Gary Bunting, of the county’s Corrections Division, said that over the last couple of years, issues have kept piling up.

The provider hires a variety of personnel such as licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, nurse practitioners and physicians. Bunting said a vast majority of the medical employees hired by the company were LPNs, and the provider decided to eliminate all LPNs from providing services to their clients companywide.

“They didn’t communicate any of this to us, but they gave notifications to the part-time staff,” Bunting said.

Bunting said he reached out to the company for more information behind the decision because it would have a significant impact on staffing levels, but he never received a response. Instead, Advanced Correctional Healthcare sent out communications to all of its clients confirming the news. This prompted the Sheriff’s Office to start exploring new contracts to help keep and retain existing staff, but that means staff will have to transition to the new contract as well.

“We’ve advised the new company that we want to keep our existing staff, and we try to make sure that there is no loss of pay,” Bunting said. “… We’re going to try and retain as many staff as we possibly can that we currently have.”

Prior to that, Bunting said there was a lack of transparency on the budget for their contract. Last year, around the Fourth of July, Advanced Correctional Healthcare reached out and said the Sheriff’s Office as well as their other clients would need to start paying for holiday coverage hours. This became a problem for the Sheriff’s Office because it was approximately $100,000 of unanticipated expenses.

“I’ve advised them numerous times, if there’s going to be cost increases or anything like that, I need to know by this day so we can budget accordingly, Bunting said.

“And that comes into a factor specifically because we’re a 24/7 facility,” Bunting said. “We want to make sure that medical staff is available every day in case there’s some sort of need that arises for the inmates.”

Advanced Correctional Healthcare also helped take care of medical needs that couldn’t be done in house, and those are considered outside medical expenses. Bunting said the office also contracted with the company to process and pay the office’s bills from a pool of money that’s available for paying those medical expenses.

“What they do is they go through by state statute,” Bunting said. “We only are required to pay the Medicaid rate, so they reprice the bills and then they pay any of the medical providers for us. And they were having extreme difficulty keeping up with paying the bills.”

He said the Sheriff’s Office was being contacted by several entities saying bills weren’t being paid, and the issue came up last year and continued into this year.

The new contract with Turn Key Health Clinics would continue to provide medical prescriber, nursing and certified medication aide services. As the Journal-World reported, the contract with Turn Key Health Clinics is set to be effective from Oct. 1, 2024, through Dec. 31, 2025, and includes the option for four annual renewals. Future renewals will start on Jan. 1 to align with the county’s budget cycle.

The total annual cost of the contract is $1,163,978.24, which encompasses a $124,000 allocation for medications and outside medical expenses. Future renewals will see an annual increase of 3.5% or the CPI, whichever is higher, with the increase taking effect on the renewal date. Funding for this contract is currently available in the Sheriff’s Office budget.